The field of spintronics deals with electron or nuclear spins with either up or down spin states relative to other particles that they interact with. Here are some better explainations:

http://www.quinion.com/words/turnsofphrase/tp-spi1.htm

http://www.physics.umd.edu/rgroups/spin/intro.html

http://www.glue.umd.edu/~jfabian/spintronics.html

http://spintronics.korea.ac.kr/research_map1.htm

Most spintronic devices under development deal with particles that have particular spin states and that move to other locations where they interact with other particles with their own particular spin states. Spin wave technology on the other hand deals with spin waves that propagate among particles that don't necessarily move but could possibly move from one location to another and that don't necessarily change spin states but could change spin states during their interaction with other particles.

Spin wave technology deals with the transportation of energy and information from one location to another among the precessing spins of particles that may or may not be moving but whose individual precessional motions interact with the precessional motions of other particle spins.

Visualize a crowd of people in a stadium all doing "the wave". The individual people may or may not be staying in the same place but information moves along among them by their individual motions. So also in spin wave technology electron or nuclear spins may or may not be fixed in certain positions and then among them all are spin waves that transport energy and information. Also spin states of either up or down spin may not change and still the particles in particular states can pass on information in the form of spin waves that propagate among their interacting precessional motions.

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